The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness PDF Download

Author: Oren Harman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393339998
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.

Author: Oren Harman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
"Enthralling." —Frans de Waal, New York Times Book Review Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest? Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be. Set against the sweeping tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, The Price of Altruism tells for the first time the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922–1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle. An original and penetrating picture of twentieth century thought, it is also a deeply personal journey. From the heights of the Manhattan Project to the inspired equation that explains altruism to the depths of homelessness and despair, Price's life embodies the paradoxes of Darwin’s enigma. His tragic suicide in a squatter’s flat, among the vagabonds to whom he gave all his possessions, provides the ultimate contemplation on the possibility of genuine benevolence.

Author: Oren Harman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407085247
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men. Alongside them were Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, two distinguished British evolutionary biologists. All seven men had come to mourn an eccentric American genius who helped to unpick the riddle of how altruism, or unselfish concern for the welfare of others, could exist in a world driven by survival of the fittest and who committed suicide aged just 52. In The Price of Altruism Price's personal and professional journey is intricately woven into a sweeping arc of modern politics and science that takes us from Darwin's Beagle to the court of the Russian Tsar, from Marxist manifestos to Nazi heresies, and from First World War trenches to Vietnam demonstrations. Featuring some of the most brilliant minds of the modern age, it is the riveting tale of mankind's search for the origins of kindness.

Author: Martin Nowak
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451626630
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Looks at the importance of cooperation in human beings and in nature, arguing that this social tool is as important an aspect of evolution as mutation and natural selection.

Author: David Sloan Wilson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300189494
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.

Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192860927
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

Author: Mark Pagel
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393065871
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

Author: Donald W. Pfaff
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199377464
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
"Unlike any other study in its field, The Altruistic Brain synthesizes into one theory the most important research into how and why - by purely physical mechanisms - humans empathize with one another and respond altruistically."--Jacket.

Author: Jimena Canales
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173176
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
The explosive debate that transformed our views about time and scientific truth On April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson publicly debated the nature of time. Einstein considered Bergson's theory of time to be a soft, psychological notion, irreconcilable with the quantitative realities of physics. Bergson, who gained fame as a philosopher by arguing that time should not be understood exclusively through the lens of science, criticized Einstein's theory of time for being a metaphysics grafted on to science, one that ignored the intuitive aspects of time. The Physicist and the Philosopher tells the remarkable story of how this explosive debate transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between science and the humanities that persists today. Jimena Canales introduces readers to the revolutionary ideas of Einstein and Bergson, describes how they dramatically collided in Paris, and traces how this clash of worldviews reverberated across the twentieth century. She shows how it provoked responses from figures such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, and carried repercussions for American pragmatism, logical positivism, phenomenology, and quantum mechanics. Canales explains how the new technologies of the period—such as wristwatches, radio, and film—helped to shape people’s conceptions of time and further polarized the public debate. She also discusses how Bergson and Einstein, toward the end of their lives, each reflected on his rival’s legacy—Bergson during the Nazi occupation of Paris and Einstein in the context of the first hydrogen bomb explosion. The Physicist and the Philosopher is a magisterial and revealing account that shows how scientific truth was placed on trial in a divided century marked by a new sense of time.

Author: Oren Harman
Publisher: INTERNATIONAL EDITION
ISBN: 0374150702
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
"An artful exploration of how the language of science has replaced old mythologies" --